The present experiment was conducted to explore the facilitory effects
of rhyme in lexical processing in brain-damaged individuals. Normal s
ubjects and non-fluent and fluent aphasic subjects performed auditory
lexical decision and rhyme judgement tasks, in which prime-target pair
s were phonologically related (either identical or rhyming) or unrelat
ed. Results revealed rhyme facilitation of lexical decisions to real-w
ord targets for normal and non-fluent aphasic subjects; for fluent aph
asic subjects, results were equivocal. In the rhyme judgement task, fa
cilitory effects of rhyme were found for all three groups with real-wo
rd targets. None of the groups showed clear rhyme facilitation effects
with non-word targets in either task. Findings are discussed with ref
erence to the role of phonology in lexical processing in normal and ap
hasic populations. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.